It was a freezing cold Friday night in November. Me, The Wedge, and Captain T-Bag had just moved into the Kappa Cappuccino house. It had been decided that in order to baptize the house and consecrate our friendship, we would need to have an acid trip. No big party, no women. Just the 3 of us and our one-hundred year old home.

The thing was, i wasn't really that into it. We were having our house warming party the following day, and R was getting some ecstasy from this legendary batch that was coming out of Texas (of all places). I had dropped acid before, but the following night was to be my first night on 'E'. I always kept my drug use under control; while i smoked pot nightly during that time in my life, anything 'harder' was a treated as a special occasion. Ritualistic, almost. I was a little tentative about the fact that i would be rolling for 2 nights in a row...

Our guy showed up with our treats. It wasn't M., this cute little thing working her way through college, who was our usual source... just some random cat that we allowed to waltz in off the street and sell us highly illegal substances. Could be spiked with Liquid Plumber, or the guy could be a cop, but Hey! how much money would you like for those illicit drugs?

(i digress. It's just that recalling the way i ran my life is a trip in and of itself)

Anyway, he told us that he had just done the stuff the night before, and it was 'Really Visual'. That got me. I had done acid a couple of times before, and while i had had a great time, and had some nice communion with the right side of my brain, it wasn't the melting walls, Bruce Lee movie trails that everyone had led me to expect.

So we dropped. And then there is that time that you wait, spending time waiting for the time that time will mean nothing.

'Dude, do you feel anything?'

'No.'

'How 'bout now?'

'Nope.'

'Dude, i'm totally starting to feel it...'

'Dude, shut up. Too soon.'

I was sitting on a recliner chair... waiting. Wedge and the Captain were popping chewable vitamin c like candy. I was anorexic, at the time. As we were having a big party the following night, one that members of the opposite sex would be present for, i was doing my standard 'No Food For 24 hours' thing. They were hovering around me, waiting, looking suspicious. Finally, they charged me. The bastards held me down, my arms to my sides and shoved the tablets into my mouth. In all my experience with acid, this is the one time that i ever remember the exact second that the trip began. As my teeth sunk into the dry, chalky tablet, i felt the sensation that someone had detonated a highly unstable naval orange inside my mouth...

And so it began. The thing is, we had the most incredible house for drugs. It was the upper level of this old victorian, The upstairs and then the attic, which was our living room. The room was decorated with this ultra-loungy, deco style funiture that The Wedge's dead uncle had purchased using mass amounts of Camel Cash in the 1950's. The ceiling was all sharp angles, the inverse of the sloped roof outside, and it was covered with dozens of glow in the dark stars.

I decided that i wanted to see what what the downstairs was like on acid. The Wedge and The Captain's bedrooms were side by side, and they had both left music on. From the Captain's, there was house music (Boom-chee, Boom-che, Boom-che...) and from The Wedge's was something or other New Order, with that trademark base line (Dun dun dun dun dun dun, DUN DUN DUN...) I stood between the two rooms, swaying ever so slightly, back and forth, back and forth, trying to find that Omega Point, that calm in the exact center of the storm where i could hear both strains of music clearly... but just as one burrowed against my chest, the other would fade into nothingness. I must have stood there for like, 30 minutes, trying.

I freaked out, downstairs, all by myself. I decided to go see what the guys were up to in the attic. When i got there, most of the lights were off, save for the lone black light bulb that the glow in the dark stars were sucking all their juice from. So they were shining brilliantly, but not generating any real illumination on the room below. And the furniture...

They had rearranged the entire room. Now, maybe it doesn't READ like that's a big deal, but really think about the last time that you came home and your significant other had rearranged the furniture, that vague feeling of spatial disorientation that you walk through over the next day or so. Then imagine that feeling on acid, with a minty green glow hovering in the pitch blackness above your head.

'Nice.' (Subtle, understated, the monosyllabic word was the Kappa Cappuccino seal of approval. But i guess everybody says it now.)
No response. The room appeared empty... did they leave while i was messing with my audio? Could they really have slipped out without me noticing?

Suddenly, they jumped out from behind the furniture and tackled me to the ground. We laughed for a moment, hilariously. Then i said, like a three year old 'Do it Again! Do it again!'

So, i ran back downstairs and paced around for a good long while, anticipating. Finally, they called me back. When i got upstairs i felt completely and uterly betrayed. The one thing i swore i would never do on acid was sit and watch a movie. And that is precisely what they were doing... they had put all of the furniture back in order, and were sitting, calmly watching 'An American Tail 2: Fivel Goes West' which The Wedge had gotten from a promotion that McDonalds was doing.

'Dude, no! I am not going to waste this totally amazing, mind altering experience on some stupid movie. I want a vision quest... I want to trip the light fantastic... i want...'

There, before me, being played out right before my very eyes was the universe tale of tragedy... the plight of this family of mice, just trying to make a home for themselves in the New World. They were on some sort of raft, racing on this violent current of water through this endless, labyrithine series of pipes...

20 minutes later, Captian T-Bag told me to sit my ass on the couch, 'cause i was in his way.

I curled up like a child on the couch as this brilliant epic of mythic proportions built to a crescendo. John Clese was a cat who was trying to lure all the mice into the west so he and his evil companions could have something to eat. Dom DeLuise was this cat with some sort of glandular problem that risked his standing in the feline community by supporting the Rodent cause. And the late Jimmy Stuart was a dog who taught young Fivel how to believe in himself.

There's this one part, with Fivel's sister (I don't remember her name, but she has always dreamed of being a singer) and they're trapped in this Old West style saloon. All these drunken ruffian cats are holding Fivel and Dom Deluise cat and Jimmy Stuart dog hostage, and things look like they're going to get really violent, and how will are heroes escape...?

And Fivel's sister SCREAMS!

And the room freezes, everyone stares at her... but she holds the scream...

and a beer bottle shatters into a million peices... but still she holds the pitch perfect scream...

and then she breaks it down into this totally amazing, absolutely incredible hoe-down style song...

'WHO'S THE GIRL YOU LEFT BEHIND?
SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING
WHO'S THE GIRL YOU LEFT BEHIND?
SOMETHING, SOMETHING...
SOME-THING!'

Oh, i don't remember all the words, but seriously, it was incredible. My heart was racing. It was like somebody gently, painlessly carved this huge hole and my chest and was fucking it desperately.

There was a big showdown at High Noon between Fivel, Dom Deluise cat, Jimmy Stuart dog, and John Clese cat, and a tearful reunion with Fivel's family, and then...

...out on the horizon, while the hero rode off into the sunset, there was this tiny, non-descript little speck floating in the sky, i strained my eyes to see what it was then SNAP! It ripped into the foreground -- nearly out of the screen altogether -- the enormous, finalizing words

'THE END!'

(This
is
Where
i
Peaked...)

I was in the throws of the deepest, most profound extacy i had ever ever experienced. I wanted to rip off my clothes... my shirt, my jeans, my very skin, and run through the street, singing all the words of 'Who's the Girl You Left Behind' that i could remember at the top of my lungs. I lept from the couch and started running circles around the room -- Then i ran down stairs to the main hallway. I shot back and forth from one end to the other, over and over and over again. When i got to either end, i didn't slow down, i just let myself crash full force into the wall. Then i would compose myself, turn and face the other side of the house, and repeat. All this felt completely, blissfully rational to me, as if there was no other reaction one possibly could have to a work of such life affirming, celluloid brilliance.

The Wedge and the Captain obviously did not agree, and were probably more than a little freaked out that i just might never come back from that distant edge that i was now out upon. As i made one last senseless sprint down the hall, The Wedge stepped into my path...

The Wedge is not a small man. His Nome de Plume comes from the fact that he has a HUGE member, shaped like one of those wooden things you use to keep a door open. His entire body is like that... Monolithic, imposing... crashing into The Wedge was more jarring to my system than than all my times running into the wall combined. I slammed up against The Wedge, and the sensation was that of collapsing... folding... melting. I was like an egg smashed up against a house, while the force of gravity pulled my gellatinous mass back down to the ground.

The Captian navigated me back up into the attic while The Wedge brewed up a giant pot of coffee. It's a well known fact among my friends that coffee actually smooths my hyperactive nervous system... I guzzled it down like it was Kool Aid... cup after cup. I remember my nerves telegraphing 'HOT' to my into my brain, but the very concept got lost among the neurons... 'what is 'hot' anyway? Just a word, an abstraction.'

At about this time, the caffine must have sunk in for The Captain... he lit 3 cigarettes in his mouth at once. He put one into my mouth as i sat like a puddle on our sectional couch. He took the others, one in each hand, stood on the armrest at the other side of the couch and danced, swinging his arms around in these wide arcs. The red-hot cherries at the end of the cigarates traced glowing lines in mid air. I remember thinking to myself, 'This acid IS Really Visual'...

It was like 'Laser Floyd' at the Planetarium, but with better music...

The Captain sang along to the Madchester, acid house stylings of Primal Scream, 'Come Trip Inside This House'

(I didn't know until I bought the album, just last year, that the title was 'Come SLIP Inside This House')

The Captain finally plopped down alongside me as i stared up at the sloped ceiling, as the glow in the dark stars waxed and waned, shimmering, back and forth like a reflection of the full moon on gently rolling waters. I stared at it for the longest time, waiting for the effect to stop, waiting for the drugs to wear off, but it just continued, on and on and on. I broke into soft laughter. This was REAL. I thought to myself that if i could look at the Captain, and NOT tell him what i was seeing, but could somehow get out of him that he was seeing the same thing as me... then that would mean that this wasn't some mere illusion, this would mean that we had actually moved into some quantum, alternate reality where matter periodically shifted into a liquid state.

'Dude, you see it, don't you? YOU SEE IT...'

He flashed me that wide grin that moistened so many women's panties. He raised his hand into the air. My eyes followed his pointer finger as he indicated the opposite side of the couch...

Exhausted from the amazing vibe in the room, The Couch drew a deep, sharp breath, then sank back down with an orgasmic sigh...

The Captain and I splashed back against the sofa where we sitting, and continued to watch the stars.

That, more or less was the pinnacle of the evening.
Sure, i could go on... about how i found The Wedge downstairs an hour later, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, clipping his toenails on the patio in 10 degree weather...
...or about how i discovered how well plungers stick to my bald head, and that while i was balancing a plunger from a single fingertip, i was able to keep it from falling, was able to control the very inner workings of destiny just by saying the word 'IS'... 'IS, IS, IS, IS, IS, IS, IS, IS' Until it ceased to be a word, and became an incantation.

...or i could tell you all about the following night, on E, when i walked into my pitch black room to go to bed, and i heard breathing from some stranger on the ches lounge chair across from me, and i asked, coyly, 'are you a boy or a girl?'... 'Girl' ... and she welcomed me to climb onto her and have the most wonderful 30 minute relationship with her mouth...

(okay, i just did tell you that. ANY excuse to tell that story...)
I could tell you about how so many other moments of my life since that night are seen through the perspective that i gained -- evolved that night...

All because of this one moment, when i sat, coming down, ever so gently while The Stone Roses 'Second Coming' album played in the background

'Are we etched in stone, or just
scratched in the sand...
Waiting for the waves to come
and retake the land...'

And right then i knew. I knew that EVERYTHING is an illusion. Fleeting, temporary... i knew that existentialism is the most beautiful philosophy in the history of the world, because it’s the only philosophy that captures how brief and fragile we are, and thusly expresses how truly unique our existence is. I understood in that instant that “The Afterlife” is an oxymoron, fool’s gold – the Universe is an eternity’s worth of Now, that never-ending “IS”. I saw that our individual lives are an interpretive dance, expressing from our subjective perspective what G-d, the Universe and Everything is all about. I felt that the only way to truly have lived for that instant is to get up on stage and feel the music...
So that’s it. And here I am now, 9 years later.
Still dancing.

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